Unhappy due to overcrowding

brisbell · Nov 2, 2005

How can I keep my citizens from being unhappy due to overcrowding? I have unhappiness due to overcrowding even when my cities are at size 2 and 3.

mrsticks1982 · Nov 2, 2005

what are you building for your city when your people become unhappy?

I tend to lean toward culture items when my city is young, just make sure that it will grow and have the borders expand.

brisbell · Nov 2, 2005

Well, that's the problem. When my cities are brand new and I'm still building a defense unit and a worker there is already unhappiness from overcrowding. By the time I get around to building things to make them happy it's already too late, then I'm in a race to constantly offset unhappy people due to overcrowding with buildings to keep them happy. Is there something I can make to specifically alleviate overcrowding. It just seems a little lame that a city with pop 2 is already overcrowded.

KrikkitTwo · Nov 2, 2005

You can't get rid of over crowding the best youy can do is counter it by getting happiness improvements, as long as you have more happiness than unhappiness, you are fine.

walkerjks · Nov 2, 2005

brisbell said:
It just seems a little lame that a city with pop 2 is already overcrowded.

What's your difficulty level set at? High diffficulty levels have always caused this in past version of Civ.

One idea - get the civic that adds extra happiness for military units early. Temples are great for happiness, but as a stopgap, military units probably make more sense (since you need them anyway).

Frenetic_Saxon · Nov 2, 2005

I experienced this problem (unhappiness due to overcrowding) in my current game, at a difficulty level of Noble. It happened to one city in particular, and it persisted no matter how many cultural improvements I built, and regardless of the fact that it now had access to several happy resources.

The city continued to be generally unhappy even at a population count of 12, when I finally took more decisive action and had the city manager (inside the city screen) discourage population growth. After some time, the unhappiness went away. But I'm not sure why. Was it because growth is being discouraged, or because I made several more improvements to the surrounding terrain (which didn't appear to be a factor, or because of some resource trading with neighboring tribes? Or a combination of these things?

I wish I could tell you. I'm still in the middle of the game, so I'll let you know if I find out.

warpstorm · Nov 2, 2005

That's normal. If you have 12 pop and don't have lots of luxuries, happy buildings, or luxury spending, you will have slackers.

skalapunk · Nov 2, 2005

You will ALWAYS have X amount of unhappiness based on your city's population. For example, 10 population = 10 automatic "unhappiness". This forces you to find more Happyness (yellow happy faces) so you won't get those "angry citizens" that eat food but refuse to work the land.

The unhappiness is nothing to worry about IF and ONLY if your happiness is equal to it or greater than it. Unhappiness from being too crowded is just another way to say "you need to beat this number with happiness points to get the max use out of your citizens"

Hope this helps, I'm kinda new also and it confused me at first glance too.

walkerjks · Nov 2, 2005

skalapunk said:
The unhappiness is nothing to worry about IF and ONLY if your happiness is equal to it or greater than it. Unhappiness from being too crowded is just another way to say "you need to beat this number with happiness points to get the max use out of your citizens"

Ah yes, I was misunderstanding the original poster's problem. I forgot that the unhappiness will show on the city screen, even when it has no effect at all (happiness > unhappiness). So it can appear there is a problem when there isn't.

So yeah, don't focus on the number of red faces. Simply make sure the yellow faces >= red faces.

Frenetic_Saxon · Nov 2, 2005

What does it mean, though, when you see a unhappy green face (like a Mr. Yuck) beside your city's name? I'm guessing it means that my red faces out-number my yellow faces.

The city I mentioned in my previous post had this Mr Yuck face on it from size 4 through size 12--despite my cultural improvements and access to luxury resources--when I finally told the city governor to discourage population.

walkerjks · Nov 2, 2005

Green face on the main view means the city is unhealthy. Red face on the main view means it's unhappy.

In Civ 4 you have to worry about two factors. Whether the population exceeds it's capacity to keep people happy (which temples and luxuries and such help with) and whether or not your population exceeds it's capacity to keep people healthy.

For health, special food resources (wheat, rice, corn, clams, fish, etc), forests, fresh water, and a few buildings help. Population, flood plains and (I think) jungles hurt and a few buildings (forge, factory, coal plants) hurt.

crazybeard · Nov 2, 2005

Frenetic_Saxon said:
What does it mean, though, when you see a unhappy green face (like a Mr. Yuck) beside your city's name? I'm guessing it means that my red faces out-number my yellow faces.

"Mr. Yuck Face" is the symbol for "unhealthiness". As with happiness, health only matters if + < -. The green faces are compared with the red cross icons. (health). Again, as with unhappiness, 0 unhealthiness is virtually impossible. Check p. 148 of the manual.

APowers222 · Nov 2, 2005

Green Mr. Yuck means that your pollution points are larger than your health points. When that happens, a little Mr Yuck is near the city title on the world map and the city itself has a smog or haze around it. All sorts of stuff can increase Mr Yucks--jungles, floodplains, forges, factories, etc. On the other hand, all sorts of stuff can increase health points--difficulty level, grocer, hospital, etc. As with the red unhappy faces, i believe the base level of unhappiness is the population of your city....don't really remember though. (I managed to pull myself away from the game after beating my first one the night/morning before at 4A). Hope this helps.....

Frenetic_Saxon · Nov 2, 2005

Ahh, yes. I knew the two factors existed, yet I was obviously confusing them. Doh! Thanks walkerjks.

bayareastank · Nov 2, 2005

with healthy/unhealthy and happy/unhappy, it doesn't matter as long as they're healthy and happy are greator than unhappy/unhealthy.

If you have 10 happy and 10 unhappy, you suffer no illeffects. But if you have 10 happy and 11 unhappy, you end up with 1 person consuming food and not producing anything. I read this chapter in the manual last night.

So you just need to keep the ration at least equal if not greator on the positive side.

Unhappy due to overcrowding

brisbell

Chieftain

mrsticks1982

Chieftain

brisbell

Chieftain

KrikkitTwo

Immortal

walkerjks

King

Frenetic_Saxon

Chieftain

warpstorm

Yumbo? Yumbo!

skalapunk

Chieftain

walkerjks

King

Frenetic_Saxon

Chieftain

walkerjks

King

crazybeard

Warlord

APowers222

Chieftain

Frenetic_Saxon

Chieftain

bayareastank

Chieftain

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